Building skills through play may look like fun and games but it has a great deal of intention and patience.
This guide is designed to help bring intentional play into your household. It may be beneficial to revisit these key points when feeling in a rut at home or helping your child with a particular skill. If you are looking for further guidance on a particular skill, ask your child’s therapist! Our team of therapists have a wealth of experience from birth to 18 years old. We are here to help your child reach their highest potential!
- Identify the delayed skills: You may already know what is difficult for your child, if not talk with teachers, or your child’s OT to learn what skills to address.
Common skills include: fine motor grasping, releasing, turning in hand ( in hand manipulation), tracing, copying shapes and staying in the lines (visual motor perception), timing, sequencing, speed, concentration, bilateral (two handed) coordination, hand eye coordination, attention, turn taking (social), force/pressure (proprioceptive modulation), and managing clothing fasteners.
- Choose toys that the child must physically interact with. No screens or buttons! Toys with flashing lights and buttons that play music or “teach” ABCs are fun but they are fairly static. Once the button is pressed the child can sit back and watch or listen to the toy. (Active toys lead to passive play). Sometimes electronic toys can cause kids to get overstimulated or fixate on repetitively pressing a preferred button. Look for toys where the child has to pick up, turn, lift, move, hold, twist, scan, plan, problem solve, trial and error, pretend play, and use creativity and imagination. Examples: Legos, blocks, farm animals (you and your child can make the animal sounds to work on speech), doll house, play kitchen, dress up, sandbox or playdoh tools, random craft supplies.
- Encourage imagination and pretend play. Show your child creative uses for the same toy. A round peg block can be a block, a person, a log for a truck, a flag pole on the moon, a pirate’s telescope, a pretend carrot. For children who like concrete play, (a block is a block for building) you can confirm that you know this item is really a block but it is fun for you to use imagination to pretend the block is something else. You can also encourage your child to compare the similarities and differences. “This is tall and round like a carrot, not exactly the same but a little bit the same” “It is different from a carrot because it is blue and carrots are orange”. “People eat carrots but people don’t eat blocks! What other animals eat carrots?”
- Slow down. I mean slow waaay down. A typical 5 year old child’s processing speed is a third of that of an adult. We often try to communicate and get kids to move at the speed of swipe texting when they are operating on typewriter hardware. They simply can not go as fast as us yet.
- Mix toys, rules, and parts from different games together, change the rules, or add gross motor movements to create a new way to play. Can you pick up checkers using the tongs from the play kitchen? Can you hold all of the pieces in your left hand, and put them on the board using your right hand? Can you remember to do a frog jump every time your checker jumps another piece? Can you play checkers with your Pokémon figurines? Can you stack all the checkers into a tower? Can you alternate black with red?
- Not all games are made the same way. Sometimes new releases or travel versions of the same game offer different skills. On a regular checkers board you can easily slide and push the pieces, but if you add velcro or if the checker board is made out of woven cloth then you have to pick up the pieces with more force or move them a bigger distance. Think about your child’s needs. Do they have difficulty seeing tiny pieces? Are the pieces choking hazards? What are the different hand positions needed to play with the toy and how much force or grip strength is required to play. Is your child needing more tiny precision practice? Then go with the travel version. Do they need to work on reaching or stepping? Maybe purchase an extra large game board, or tape out an extra large game board on your floor with painters tape.
- More play time with you is a greater gift than more toys to play with. Kids have so many toys but just because a child owns a toy doesn’t mean they’ll actually play with it. Children don’t always know how to play with toys, and some children struggle with creativity and imagination in play. Model, demonstrate and show them how they could play with the toys they already have. Promote flexibility in play not rigidity.
“ Some people play with dolls by talking to them, some people play with dolls by changing their clothes and feeding them.
I’m going to put my baby doll to sleep for nap time. How are you going to play with your baby doll?”
- You don’t need to buy the most expensive toys. You just need to use the right item to build the skill. A twig when held like a pencil to draw in the sand can work on the same skills as an expensive tablet pen. Look around your house for safe objects that can be used to build skills. Pennies (with supervision), washing actual dishes instead of pretend dishes, bread dough instead of play doh, old cereal boxes instead of construction paper. Snapping green pea pods instead of playing with snap beads. Oftentimes engagement in our everyday activities gives children plenty of opportunities to problem solve, imitate, copy, talk and use their hands in different ways. We as parents just need to give them the extra time they need which is challenging in our fast paced lives and with our limited reserves of energy and patience.
- You do not need to work on every skill, every day, all the time. Even therapists sometimes fall into the trap of trying to address every single goal on the plan of care each session. Keep it simple. Rome was not built in a day. 5 minutes of your undivided attention, targeting a single skill, and your best patience, kindness and support without expecting a specific outcome can be all it takes to help your child gain more independence.
- Monitor and modify your expectations. If you go into a session of teaching your child to tie their shoes with the expectation that after a session or two they will be completely independent then you are setting them up for failure, and setting yourself up for frustration over feeling like a bad parent because you “should” be able to teach your child this skill. Instead take 5 minutes to play with and teach your child how to pick up, loop, manipulate and twist laces between their fingers, around their fingers. Let them mess up the knots, can they wind the lace around a toilet paper roll? Around a pencil? Make string craft projects. Give them time to master the hand skills to become expert lace “picker uppers” and “movers” before attempting to teach them the intricate positioning, looping, and holding required for tying a bow. Wouldn’t you rather work with someone who is playful and fun and shows you new tricks rather than someone who is telling you how many times you are making a mistake, or that you are “not quite there yet” or not good enough, or taking things out of your hands because they can do it “right” and better than you.
- Have them watch you. Every time you tie your shoes, go through the process in exactly the same way, slowly… even s.l.o.w.e.r. Try your best to keep your hands clear of how the laces are moving. Pause occasionally. Give them words that go along with the action and demonstrate what is the expected action. “I am taking the outside lace and crossing it over on top of the lace…pause… not on bottom…pause… this is the bottom of the lace…pause… and this is the top. I spy the top can you?…long pause…That’s right! I want my lace to cross on top.” Try to resist the urge to quiz your child. “Where’s the top? Where’s the bottom? Which one is left? Which one is right?” This can overwhelm them and take their focus away from what you are actually trying to teach them. Show them on purpose mistakes and how to correct when a mistake or “wrong way” happens. Model kindness to yourself when you make mistakes. Whoops! Oh well! Small problem! No big deal! Try again!
- Invite them to participate. Children have plenty of things they are told to do and must do on a daily basis. When building new skills (especially when these skills are already difficult and challenging)
We want to try and limit:
Judgment “ you’re just not trying hard enough, focus!”
Questioning Effort “why aren’t you trying?”
Demanding Action “try it right now.”
An invitation to learn and play looks more like demonstration and offering and then moving on.
“Look! I wound the yarn up so many times! Around and around like this. Now the tube is purple instead of brown. Do you want to wind some purple or is there a different color you want to try?”
Offer support only if needed.
“Do you want me to hold it while you try, or do you want to hold it all by yourself?”
If they refuse, then try something different.
“Look I can loop the yarn and now it looks like (car wheels, flower petals, bunny ears)! How neat!”
Trying something different doesn’t mean giving up on the initial skill. It just means put that on hold for now and try again later. Later could be the same session, same day, or next week. Sometimes children need lots of exposure and opportunity before they are willing to try. Watch your child for the cues they are giving you on their readiness.
- Don’t assume a child knows what you mean even if they have heard a word before. knowing what you mean when you use a phrase or a word also means understanding how that word or phrase changes with context. “Outside” and “inside” mean very different things when you are talking about going outside of a house compared to the outside of a foot. “The outside of my foot is where my pinky toe is, and the inside of my foot is between my legs.” Show and explain in more detail than you think is needed initially and over time reduce how much you explain. Even older children can benefit from an explanation that helps them better understand the what? when? and why? of the world.
Chi, M. T. H., & Klahr, D. Span and rate of apprehension in children and adults. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1975, 19, 434-439
CHI M.H. University of Pittsburg. Age Differences in the Speed of Processing: A Critique. Developmental Psychology 1977, Vol. 13, No’. 5, 543-544